The challenge for any business is reaching people interested in your services and engaging them in a meaningful way. For the owners of a new niche brand that meant finding the right platform to showcase their work so customers understand what they do.

New Bronze Age Tile owners Denise Siegel and Dave Jaffe sought to expand their customer base by launching a hand-crafted bronze work business called deniseSiegelbronze. They needed an online presence to reach customers looking for the unique, beautifully crafted products the company offers, to establish Denise as a leader in her industry, and engender conversation with her clients and beyond. They also wanted something that was easy to update themselves and to showcase bronze pieces as Denise created them.

Continue Reading →

Textured elements for a tactile site!

Recently, our good friends Dave and Denise came to us with a request to help them build a website for their new company. Denise was set to launch deniseSiegelbronze – a new spin of her existing company New Bronze Age Tile. Her new brand places a heavier emphasis on Denise’s custom, hand-crafted bronze work and they wanted to make sure that this came across in their new site. They also wanted the site to be a platform to help establish Denise as a leader in her industry and engender conversation with her clients and beyond. And finally, they wanted something that was easy to update themselves and would allow them to showcase bronze pieces as Denise created them.

Not being ones to shy away from tall orders, or abandon friends in need, we jumped at the chance.

Continue Reading →

We have launched many websites in our time, but few were as eventful as the one we participated in for GlenviewMarines.com. Doug and I headed up to the old Glenview Naval Base for the official launch of the site dedicated to helping the servicemen and women who make up the Glenview Marines. Having donated our services, we wanted to introduce them to the ins and outs of their new site.

As part of the celebration, we were treated to the presentation of the flags by a full Color Guard and a spontaneous singing of the Marine Corps Hymn (Did you ever hear the last verse? Hilarious!). We were also joined by representatives from the Semper Fi Fund, the Wounded Warrior Regiment and Andrew Tibby, a local Iraqi vet who had received grants from the Semper Fi Fund. Continue Reading →

ABANow.org

Recently, our friends at the American Bar Association asked us to redesign their Media Relations and Communication Services website. There were many practical reasons for this: adding features, improving site navigation and usability, and making content easier to add and update.

But the primary reason for the redesign was in the social media realm. The Media Relations Division was evolving from communicating with the news media, to take on added responsibilities for communicating with members, the legal community and the public. In addition to timely web content, these readers like to get a well-rounded perspective on the news. They still look for traditional fact-based information, but also enjoy the perspectives offered by blogs and seek the reaction of others within their social networks. Continue Reading →

Designing for the web comes with a unique set of challenges and thus has its own ‘charm’. User interactivity, browser compatibility, connection speed, color calibration, flash, html, css… these are all factors that have to be accounted for when building a web page. (Each of these may become their own topic of discussion in time.) The sheer number of variables to control can make the process extremely tedious.

The technology underlying these variables is extremely new and is constantly changing. It’s a little bit of a ‘wild west’ environment. So, understandably, many of the people who commission web work are still a bit new to the whole thing and, therefore, it falls on designers and developers to educate and guide them through the process. Overall, it’s a rewarding experience. But you do sometimes have to overcome certain preconceptions that people carry over from their days in traditional media.

Continue Reading →

How do you organize 15 years of documentation ranging from mundane how-to procedures for printing color documents to sensitive project information and vital work flow documentation, that need to be accessible to everyone in your exceedingly mobile and collaborative work environment?

You create a WiKi, and that’s exactly what we at Manning Productions have been working on in our spare time over the course of the past few months.

A Whaty? A Wiki

As defined by Wikipedia the unequivocal leader in wiki-mentation, a wiki is…

“…a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content… Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites… The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranets and Knowledge Management systems.”

I don’t know if I can explain it any better myself, but in other words, a Wiki is an online collection of information that is easily updated and referenced by everyone in your work-group.  It is not platform dependent, meaning Windows, and Apple computer users have equal access, and it can be password protected to secure vital information, allowing access to only those with a valid password a login.

Why Wiki? Because We Share.

We have always had shared storage at Manning, but for some office organization and procedural documents we wanted the ability to have one single set of files, stored within one location that any Manning employee could update and have access to at any given time, in or out of the office. That way we aren’t looking through several folders and 20 versions of a document for information. It’s a one-stop shop for info that we all need access to. Plus, its less cumbersome to track down and update procedural information, meaning people are more likely to make those corrections on a regular basis. So, for example, if we get a new phone system we can change the directions for using that phone system on the Wiki easily.

So as our Thanksgiving holiday approaches this year we give thanks to our Wiki!